


Every Moment Something New

by edenbound



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-10
Updated: 2010-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:56:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenbound/pseuds/edenbound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is so much for Castiel to learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Moment Something New

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feywood (LJ)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=feywood+%28LJ%29).



> I still haven't seen S5, so please don't spoiler me. The idea of this fic is that, after everything, Castiel becomes human for Dean. That's all you need to know. There are basically no spoilers for any of canon.

"You'd think you'd never seen snow before," Dean says, coming out of the door. Castiel glances at him, taking in the heavy boots, the thick coat, the scarf.

"I thought you didn't want to come out in it. You said, 'Snow is cold, wet and boring.'"

"You're out here," Dean says, with a little shrug. "Here," and he tosses him a scarf. "You're human now, remember? You're going to freeze if you're not careful."

Castiel catches the scarf and wraps it round his neck solemnly. In truth, he wants the cold of the snow, this strange and still new mortality. His toes are cold, trapped in his thick boots that are so like Dean's, and he wriggles them. Confinement, being wrapped about by human flesh and then layers of clothes -- it still chafes, sometimes. The snow falling on his face reminds him of the cold space between stars, a world he can barely grasp now, a world he'll never inhabit again.

When he looks at Dean again, he realises that Dean read more of that from him than he'd thought. He wonders if that's the mortality, making him more open, or just a mark of how deeply they've penetrated under each other's defences. "Walk with me," he says, quietly, and Dean nods.

"S'why I'm out here, stupid." Dean is the first to start walking and Castiel falls in just behind him, watching him, learning the best way to walk in this deep snow. All the things he must learn stretch out in front of him, and it seems he's never done learning. He never knew, when he was not human, how very much there is to learn. He had to re-learn even Dean, who he'd thought he'd known, no longer able to feel the cues of emotion that before had been as clear as words if he'd reached out for them. He had to re-learn Dean's silences, the gaps between his words. This silence holds a question.

"It's peaceful, like this," he offers, hoping to prompt Dean for more clues -- he won't say what's on his mind, not so directly, but perhaps Castiel can find his way to it. Dean looks over his shoulder, face blank.

"Yeah. That's 'cause most sensible people are inside."

"I like it." A pause, and no response, and Castiel pursues it carefully. "I have seen snow before. But I've never felt it like this." So many thing he's never felt. The pinpricks of cold falling on his face. The feel of eyelashes clogged with snowflakes. Cold toes wriggling inside thick boots. The warmth of another body, close but not touching, snow falling between them. All of a sudden Castiel hungers, a still alien hunger, for the feel of Dean -- catches his wrist and stops him, reels him in carefully. "Dean," he says, almost nose to nose with him. There's amusement on Dean's face now, just a little.

"I thought you were... regretting. The way you were looking up at the sky."

"No," Castiel says, and leans up to re-learn the taste of Dean's mouth, the shape of it, to learn for the first time the shocking heat of it when the whole world seems frozen. "It's strange, but I don't want to leave, Dean. I told you I'd never go back on my decision."

"Humans change their minds, Cas," Dean says, shrugging. "You're becoming more human all the time."

"Will you ever change your mind about me?" -- honest curiosity, this, though Castiel is more interested in Dean's mouth, in the heat of another kiss.

"Huh? Of course not," Dean says, similarly distracted. He pulls away and gives Castiel a serious look, though. "Did you think I would?"

"You think I would," Castiel says, gently. The snow is catching all in Dean's hair, hardly melting, and Castiel reaches up to learn the feel of that, the coldness against his fingers and the way Dean's hair turns to spikes.

"I'll trust you if you'll trust me," Dean says, after a moment, watching him carefully, cautiously. It occurs to Castiel as if for the first time that Dean, too, has to learn.

"I trust you," he says, firmly, and then worms his hand in, somehow, under Dean's layers, presses his ice-cold hand to Dean's belly to learn the feel of that. Dean squawks and splutters and nearly falls over trying to get away, and Castiel re-learns the feel of an honest, human grin on his own face as he chases him. He re-learns the way his heart quickens at Dean's laughter, at his touch, the way joy spreads inside him like a sudden warmth at being with Dean -- the absurd freedom of this, as if the layers and the flesh don't truly matter, as if he's more free now than he ever could have been as that powerful and untouchable being he once was.


End file.
